DPDK has been recognised as the go-to NFV solution for high performance networking applications since its inception in 2010. These applications are notoriously difficult to manage in a cloud environment. They typically have strict resource demands, require complex mechanisms to synchronize with the kernel or need to re-invent kernel network stack functionality in user space, and are difficult to monitor. Application developers and infra managers have leveraged many techniques to work around the provisioning and management issues of these applications in cloud environments, but are still far from having a truly cloud-native high performance packet processing framework.

Innovations with eBPF, XDP and AF_XDP provide a unique opportunity to migrate existing DPDK applications to leverage AF_XDP, and the benefits it brings as a standard Linux networking interface, without having to modify the application.

In this talk we will present how one can achieve this transition as well as the benefits and pitfalls of AF_XDP and how these applications can be deployed in Kubernetes with the help of the AF_XDP Device Plugin.